You Always Were, You Know
by Nehszriah
Summary: After a run-in with a murderous fish-being in 1834 Copenhagen, the Doctor and Clara run into himself only for a near-disaster to strike, showing the difference between the two versions of the same man. [Whouffaldi peppered with some Souffez; from a tumblr prompt]


A/N: The following was the result of a prompt on tumblr regarding the difference between the depth between the Doctor's feelings for Clara, as illustrated by Eleven and post-LC Twelve. Then I went and mangled some Jane Eyre quotes and this is the end result.

* * *

You Always Were, You Know

It didn't take long for the Doctor and Clara Oswald to get back into the swing of things. Putting the Santa Incident behind them, they moved to being on adventures together more often. Not every day, as that would be completely disruptive, but it was still more often than just Wednesdays. With stars in their eyes and shimmering in the air, they travelled throughout time and space, content simply with being together.

Today, for Clara at least, it was a Saturday afternoon. For Hans Christian Anderson, it was Tuesday in the early evening. He had been saved from the Saturnyne and was now back at home, safe and sound. It left Clara and the Doctor to wander about the streets of 1834 Copenhagen, the Time Lord puzzling away.

"Didn't your mother ever tell you that if you keep making that face that it'll get stuck permanently?" Clara joked. They were walking by the seaside, on the way back to the TARDIS.

"Huh...? Oh, no, I was still thinking about the Saturnyne—the last time I met one, it was in much warmer waters. I didn't think they could survive this far north and for this long, if any survived at all."

"Is the water in Venice that much warmer?"

"The difference of a degree or two is the difference between a hospitable environment or not," the Doctor frowned. "I can only imagine what the invasion protocols would have been like had they landed in a different century."

"Ugh, don't make me think about that." The TARDIS was in-sight now, ready for them to pop off towards their next adventure. They were about fifty meters from the ship when they froze, dead in their tracks…

…another TARDIS was materializing right next to theirs.

"This is bad," the Doctor scowled. He pulled Clara along as he ducked into an alleyway, hiding from his soon-to-be-other self. "Crossing time streams is a very dangerous thing. When I first stopped the Saturnyne, I made a monitoring sweep of the planet to make certain that none escaped and were planning on taking over elsewhere. There's a gap in my memory—this must be it."

"…a gap in your memory…?! You mean you 'forgot' about meeting yourself?!"

"If I knew then I would look like this now, it would have devastated me. I was a bit vainer then, if you'll believe, and although it wasn't the worst I ever was—let alone the worst quality I've ever had—it's still enough to want to avoid it."

"I'm still trying to get over the fact that you _forgot_ this," she hissed. "I thought you rarely forgot a thing!"

"_Rarely_ doesn't mean _never_."

"Clearly."

"_Clara…?_"

The two adventurers cringed as they heard the new voice, both turning slowly to meet the source. It was the Doctor alright: it was the Doctor as a younger man, both superficially and time-wise, with his outer mask of a strong chin and floppy brown hair and a bowtie that was at-odds with the Time Lord's older state.

"So… then it's well _after_ my initial sweep for the Saturnyne," the Doctor in a hooded sweatshirt and jumper scowled. The Doctor in braces blinked curiously.

"You are me?"

"How else would Clara have gotten here? Only with someone as charming and dashing as ourself."

"This is true, but the question now is how do _you_ fit in?"

"I really don't think that is the question you should be asking yourself," Jumper replied. Braces bristled at that. "I think the question that _we_," he gestured at himself and Clara, "should be asking _you_ is why you are suddenly crossing a time stream that I have been extremely careful to not allow myself to cross?"

"Well, I don't know now if I should say."

"_Doctor_," Clara insisted, putting a hand on Braces's arm. "**_Please_**." Jumper knew intrinsically that she was merely urging another version of himself along, yet it still did not mean that he was a bit jealous seeing the contact.

"If you must know, Clara Oswald, I was merely waiting on Wednesday to happen along when I picked up a reading on the TARDIS's scanning systems that revealed there was a pair of dangerous non-native lifeforms converging in this particular space-time coordinate. Naturally, I investigated."

"We already destroyed one," Jumper noted. "Did it say where the other one is?"

"I do believe I'm looking at him," Braces said.

"Boys, stop, you're both pretty," Clara cut in. She linked her arms with theirs—Jumper on her left and Braces on her right—and gave them each a stern look. "Now, it's not often that I get two of you at once, and I am going to enjoy it, so I need you both to quit your bickering and shut up and take me for a nice walk around town."

"Yes ma'am," both of him grumbled. They walked with her out of the alley and onto the pavement, where they ambled along amongst the varying people who were milling about and conducting business along the canal. The Doctors grumbled and whined about the position they were in, whilst Clara had absolutely none of it.

She was determined to diffuse the situation, and she was not going to let it be ruined by a couple of whiny babies.

As sunset dimmed the air and lit the lamps, the three time-and-space travelers began to relax as they wandered around, the Human almost smug in the fact that her plan worked. They munched on chips and peeked in on shops (and stood outside in silence whilst Clara peeked in on other shops), taking their time as the bossiest of their group dragged the others around in her determination to see what she could.

"Overall, this has been a lovely day," Clara mentioned. They were now walking alongside a different canal than the one the TARDISes were parked along, the crowds having thinned out in the nighttime air to only a few people in the distance. "I got to meet a famous author, I saved said famous author from a murderous alien, I got to spend the remainder of the day with two of my favorite alien…" She turned around to see Braces and Jumper following at a short distance, both with their hands jammed in their trouser pockets and with annoyed looks on their faces. "Will the two of you stop being so irritable?"

"I can't help that I used to be irritat_ing_, Clara," Jumper grumbled.

"_I'm_ the irritating one…?" Braces scoffed. "You look like you just rolled out of bed after a thousand-year sleep and refuse to change out of your jim-jams."

"You keep on postulating as though you're the cleverest here."

"That's because I am—I'm the Doctor."

"Yeah, and I'm the Doctor too! We can at least _share_ the position!"

"If you really, truly are me, then you know that we simply don't _share_ that easily."

"Only if Clara allows it."

"Then what do you say Cla—"

Both the Doctors paused their bickering to look at Clara, who had most certainly disappeared from the pavement. The ground where she had been standing was wet, with a trail leading to the canal.

"CLARA!" both the Doctors yelled. Braces scrambled for his sonic screwdriver, whilst Jumper began to shed his upper layers.

"What are you doing?!" Braces gasped. "We don't know what just took her!"

"I do, and she is not going to get out of this that easily." Now down to a t-shirt with a skull surrounded by smoke on the front, Jumper dove into the water without another word. Braces scanned the canal below, searching for signs of himself and their friend.

Moments later and Jumper surfaced, pulling an unconscious Clara long with him. Braces helped them ashore and frowned as he watched himself panic over the woman's torn clothes and lack of breathing.

"This could be one of the echoes, you know," he stated. "They die."

"She isn't one of the echoes—this is _my Clara_! She's the real one!" He scanned her over with his sonic screwdriver, pinpointing what he needed to do. "We need the medbay. Now."

"Give me a mo'," Braces said. He scurried off, the TARDIS materializing next to Jumper and Clara the moment he turned the corner. Opening the door, he poked his head out and glanced down at his other self. "Back."

"Out of the way," Jumper growled. He picked up Clara gently, cradling her in his arms as he brought her into the TARDIS. He went past all the old interior of the console room without so much as a second glance—nostalgia was not the important thing now…

The important thing was making sure Clara lived.

Finding the medbay with ease, Jumper placed Clara on a bed and began to work. He pulled down the life support mask and affixed it to her face, attached a vitals monitor to her wrist, and began to tear the rips in her clothes further open. She had multiple bites and gashes in her torso, arms, and legs, all of which were very eerie to Braces.

"There was another Saturnyne," he realized.

"Yeah—we were not the other dangerous non-native lifeform on the radar, but that thing was," Jumper snapped.

"In _Copenhagen…_?"

"Yes! **_In Copenhagen!_** Now are you just going to stand there or are you actually going to help yourself save her?! We are the Doctor and we save people!"

Braces couldn't argue that; shedding his jacket and rolling up his sleeves, he grabbed a pair of devices from the nearby counter and handed one to Jumper. With one on one side and one on the other, the two took meticulous care to rejoin muscles, sinew, bone, and skin together, making it so that there was going to be little—if any—scarring in any layer of her body. They melded together the damaged tissues, making them whole once more. After what felt like hours they were done—now all they had to do was wait.

"Something to put on her, please?" Jumper asked the TARDIS. The ship whined, though Jumper seemed so entranced by staring at Clara that he did not hear her protest.

"I think you might want to reconsider," Braces suggested gently. "I don't know what Clara's done between me and him, but it was obviously important." The TARDIS whirred in a huff and a set of warm, soft pajamas appeared on the table behind him. He picked them up and presented them to his future self, nearly in offering. "Need help?"

"Yes, please," Jumper nodded. He and Braces then worked on carefully taking off the remaining shreds of clothing from Clara's body, making sure she was clean of blood and canal gunk before putting her in the pajamas. She seemed so calm and peaceful once she was fully dressed again, so much so that had it not been for the mask, it would have nearly appeared she was just a heavy sleeper.

Without a word, Jumper gingerly picked Clara up from the bed, making sure she was secure in his arms before walking out of the medbay. Braces followed his future self out the TARDIS, only pausing for just long enough to snatch the sweatshirt and jumper he had shed earlier. They went into the other TARDIS, the future one, and entered the other medbay, where they laid her down and swapped out life support masks.

"I think I'll leave her to you," Braces said solemnly. "She's in the best possible hands, it looks like."

"How are you so sure about that?"

"…because they are mine." He then left himself alone with Clara, going back to his own TARDIS without incident. A few moments and Jumper could feel himself vanish from that point in the space-time coordinate—he could feel the TARDIS take off.

Deciding it was for the better, the Doctor placed a kiss on Clara's brow before leaving the medbay for just a moment, using the opportunity to put their own version of the ship into the vortex. Once they were safe and riding the ebb and flow of time itself, he returned to her side, seeing that she was now on a larger bed. He laid down next to her, curling up along her side.

"Clara… my Clara…" he crooned. He held her hand between both of his, bringing it to his lips to kiss. "The threat is over. My other self is gone. You are now safe." He closed his eyes and exhaled heavily—all he wanted was for her to wake up.

"If I wanted safe, I would have stayed at Coal Hill."

The Doctor opened his eyes and saw that Clara was looking over at him, a strained smile on her face as she took the mask off. "Why am I so sore?" she asked, "Where's the other you?"

"You were nearly eaten by a second Saturnyne," he explained. "My other self was able to help save you via his medbay, but only just."

"…but I thought the TARDIS hated me back then…"

"It seems like it was around then she had her change of heart." He wrapped an arm around her waist and moved in closer, placing his forehead on her shoulder. "I'm so glad you're safe. I don't think I would have forgiven myself—both of myself—if you had died."

"You silly idiot," she chuckled weakly. "What do I have to fear when I have you by my side? The Oncoming Storm? The most dangerous being in the universe? The rogue Doctor, who has forsaken his people and their ways if only because he wants to save them?"

"…all nothing compared to you, my Clara." His grip became a little tighter—a hug—and she smiled at that. It did not stop his face from darkening in thought, however, further twisting the situation in his mind. "Am I cruel in my love?"

"Not at all, Doctor," she assured. "Don't address me as if I were a beauty; I am your plain, ordinary Clara Oswald. I ask only this: don't send for jewels, and don't crown me with roses: you might as well put a border of gold lace 'round a plain pocket handkerchief before you become cruel for my sake."

"It pains me to be misjudged by so good a woman," he said, smiling wanly.

"That should be my line," she smirked.

"Fine, then," he murmured. "_You are a beauty in my eyes, and a beauty just after the desire of my heart—delicate and aerial. I will make the universe acknowledge you a beauty, too_."

"That's better."

Ignoring the protests of her body, which was still sore thanks to recovering from the Saturnyne attack, Clara shifted onto her side and looked the Doctor directly in the eyes. They were so loving, so fearful, so enraged, that she truly had no choice. She cradled his face in her hands and leaned in, kissing him tenderly.

"Shall I travel?" she asked, resting her forehead against his. "And with you, sir?" She watched as a couple layers of his thought processes fizzled out, with a few others working wildly at his response.

"You shall sojourn at Peladon, Iceworld, and Mars," he only half-quoted, "at the first Yuan court, scientific dungeons, and the Old West of North America: all the ground I have wandered over shall be re-trodden by you: wherever I stamped my hoof, your sylph's foot shall step also. My entire life, I flew through time and space half mad; with disgust, hate, and rage as my companions: now I shall revisit it healed and cleansed, with a very angel as my comforter."

"I am not an angel—besides, you make it sound as though the people you traveled with then did nothing for you." His face darkening in blush, he dipped his head down and buried his face in the crook of her shoulder. "Doctor…? What's wrong?"

"I have traveled with many people over the years—good and bad—and nothing I say now means their time with me was insignificant," he replied. "They cannot help that none of them were _you_, Clara, and that the impact you've had on my life far and away is more than most of them combined."

"Ah." She knew that was likely the end of his explanation, and that soon he would be hiding behind mangled Brontë quotes once again. Skritching his scalp and pressing kisses in his hair, she allowed him to remain silent. There was a reason why, she knew, as to why only this Doctor was the one by her side and not both, and she indulged him with quiet touches and gentle, wordless assurances that she was going nowhere.

"Am I hideous, Clara?"

Right on cue.

"Very, Doctor: you always were, you know."


End file.
